Rays 12, Blue Jays 0: David Price was dominant, punching out 14 Blue Jays. Not literally. If he actually punched them out he would probably have been arrested.

Rangers 9, Angels 5: Josh Hamilton and Elvis Andrus combined to go 6 for 9 with five driven in. Jered Weaver hung tough for a while on short rest, but really didn’t have it. Not sure about that whole short rest thing on a 100+ degree day, but I guess decisions like that are why they pay Mike Scioscia the big bucks. The Rangers take two of three to retain a three-game lead over the Angles. They meet again in the final series of the season.

Reds 5, Nationals 4: Your standard 14-inning, won by a walkoff-by-Joey-Votto affair. Both managers were ejected. So too was Nationals’ bench coach and by then acting manager Pat Corrales. Why yes, it was Joe West’s crew umpiring. Why do you ask? Nineteen strikeouts for Reds pitchers.

Cardinals 7, Pirates 4: Kyle Lohse wins his 100th career game. If you put a gun to my head I never would have guessed that he had that many wins. Some guys just fly under the radar I suppose.

Twins 11, Tigers 4: For the past couple of days I’ve noticed people tweeting that the bottom third of the Twins’ lineup was laughable. Luke Hughes was in that bottom third yesterday and drove in five. On Saturday he drove in three.

Royals 2, Indians 1: Bruce Chen just knows how to win. OK, that’s not fair. Usually I use that as a backhanded compliment for mediocre guys who luck into wins. True, Chen is mediocre and has won five straight, but this one was legit. Chen allowed one run on five hits in seven and a third, salvaging one game of the series for the Royals.

White Sox 9, Mariners 3: The sweep. And now the Sox are in second place. It’s a distant second place in a crap division, but hey, second place.

Anytime I see the name Joe West come up, I have to look into the game a little more than usual. Turns out that the three ejections in the game came from 3 different umpires in the crew, including West himself. But, clearly West’s ejection of Davey Johnson was the most egregious. Johnson came out in the 6th to argue that Michael Morse was hit by a pitch with home plate ump Holbrook. Of course crew chief Cowboy Joe West gets involved. Johnson claims he stated his case, didn’t curse, and started walking back to the dugout. As he was near the dugout, West then ejected him out for no reason.

Once again Joe West abuses his authority. He again makes himself the bigger story in the game despite the game winning homerun by Votto.

Yup, Davey Johnson claims. Joe West is a bad umpire, but before you start accusing him of doing things unnecessarily, you should get more of an opinion than the guy he tossed out.

To make any informed opinion, you have to eliminate bias.

Johnson learned how to bait umpires from the master, Earl Weaver. I’m willing to bet there was a lot more said than Johnson is letting on.

There are also a lot of ways to say the magic words with cursing or screaming and shouting.

Before everyone starts screaming at me and calling me names, I agree that West and his crew need to go. But the managers have a responsibility to act like adults also, and very few of them do that with West and his crew. They go out screaming and arguing about any call they want knowing that the get the benefit of the doubt regardless of what actually happened, and then play it up to the media afterwards.

Everyone gets mad because MLB won’t let the umpires make statements after any kind of controversy, but one of those reasons is so the baseball public doesn’t get to hear about what complete asses the manages and players are when they are screaming at the umpires about something they have no chance of winning, and in most cases, don’t even know if they call was correct or not.

Johnson learned how to bait umpires from the master, Earl Weaver. I’m willing to bet there was a lot more said than Johnson is letting on.

There are also a lot of ways to say the magic words with cursing or screaming and shouting.”

TRANSLATION: “In order to eliminate bias, I’m going to make a bunch of very specific assumptions about Davey Johnson’s actions based on nothing more than my opinion of a guy he worked for three decades ago”.

Well done, sir. Bias eliminated.

The Baseball Idiot - Aug 29, 2011 at 9:17 AM

As you said, I made assumptions. I did not make a statement of fact about what happened between West and Johnson, and clearly stated more information was needed.

Managers are not allowed to argue balls and strikes. One of the most fundamental rules in the game. But they often use any excuse to get out to the plate to ask a question, then once they get the answer, they start complaining about pitches 3 innings ago.

That’s an automatic ejection. No screaming, shouting, or cursing involved.

It was Corrales who was ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Johnson was arguing a HBP call and asked the home plate umpire — not Joe West — to appeal the decision. The ump did and Johnson lost. He started returning to the dugout and West ejected him despite the fact that Johnson said nothing to West.

I watched the game. Johnson seemed pretty animated to me during his ‘non-argument’. It was a little bit more than just asking a question.

After he got the answer from the homeplate umpire, Johnson walked all the way down the line past third base to go after Joe West.

Managers are allowed to ask questions, and after they get the answer, they are supposed to go back to the dugout. Johnson didn’t do that. He didn’t get the answer he wanted, so he went after West.

Since there was no audio, we don’t know what was said. But it wasn’t nearly as simple as coming out, asking a question, then going back to the dugout.

Johnson gets his team fired up, Joe West looks bad, and everyone gets to kill millions of electrons talking about how bad Joe West is without anyone but me calling out the managers.

Johnson was in the third base dugout with a right handed batter, and there is no way he could have seen whether or not Morse got hit. But he chose to come make an ass out himself regardless.

Just like when Dusty Baker got thrown out for thinking he could see a call at second base better from 150 feet than the umpired could from 3 feet.

Both calls were correct, by the way.

halladaysbiceps - Aug 29, 2011 at 7:39 AM

I don’t question that Davey Johnson wasn’t a little hot-headed and animated. He’s was just sticking up for Morse, who thought he was hit by a pitch and proceeded to first before Holbrook called him back to the plate. A manager sticking up for his player is natural.

What I question with Joe West is his inability to allow a manager to say his peace without ejecting him. If what Johnson said was that egregious, then why not eject him right then and there? Why wait until he is walking back to the dugout to eject him? Where’s the professionalism in that?

The Baseball Idiot - Aug 29, 2011 at 7:50 AM

I missed the part where Johnson was ejected while walking back to the bench, because he never turned around, but just walked straight to the tunnel.

I might have missed something, but that would tell me that West ejected him when they were face to face, and again, without audio, we don’t know.

Cueto struck out 11 batters in 7 innings. I would have to seriously doubt that Johnson hadn’t said anything before the 7th, or that he didn’t bring it up to West. He never argued the ejection because he came out to get ejected, and must have said something to guarantee it would happen.

And once again, just like Baker, the managers are the victims while the umpires are the big, bad boogey monsters.

As Johnson walked off the field, the notoriously impetuous West threw Johnson out of the game. Johnson insisted he had not even spoken to West.
“Nothing,” Johnson said. “I didn’t cuss at anybody. Mr. West thought to get rid of me. That’s part of the game, I guess.”

The Baseball Idiot - Aug 29, 2011 at 8:08 AM

That’s what Johnson says. I like to hear the opinion of someone not connected to the Nationals. As I said, you have eliminate bias.

Pontius Pilate swears replay will show he was perfectly innocent of all charges.

Since the umpires don’t have to defend themselves, the only things we can go on are Johnson’s word and our many-angled views of it. In this case, all the information we have shows that Johnson was never talking to West and was, in fact, walking away from him at the time he was ejected.

Further, we have West’s long long long history of doing exactly that: getting involved in arguments, escalating them, and throwing out the player or manager involved. Often after the argument is over.

The Baseball Idiot - Aug 29, 2011 at 9:00 AM

Really, Ari. West went after Johnson and escalated it?

The game I was watching showed West well behind third base and moving towards the grass when Johnson went from home plate all the way down the line to have perfectly innocent, completely misunderstood conversation.

Exactly how did West ‘get involved’ and ‘escalate’ it.

Johnson is an experienced major league manager. He knew as soon as he crossed third base he was ejected. He forced the issue, regardless of when anyone thinks it happened.

Seriously, you know a lot about the game, but you have to show me something where West was the one who escalated it.

JBerardi - Aug 29, 2011 at 9:20 AM

“Johnson gets his team fired up, Joe West looks bad, and everyone gets to kill millions of electrons talking about how bad Joe West is without anyone but me calling out the managers.”

Yeah. You’re being contrarian. We get it. Maybe next you’d like to tell us all about how great Ron Paul is, or that vaccines are actually bad for you.

The Baseball Idiot - Aug 29, 2011 at 9:37 AM

I have no clue what you’re talking about.

paperlions - Aug 29, 2011 at 10:16 AM

Idiot, I don’t think you have a clue what you are talking about. You said “After he got the answer from the homeplate umpire, Johnson walked all the way down the line past third base to go after Joe West.”

Johnson walked down to talk to West AFTER West threw him out. At the time of his ejection, Johnson had not said a single word to West. West threw him out from over 90 ft away for no legitimate reason…if the ump Johnson was arguing with thought he deserved an ejection, then he would have ejected him, but he didn’t.

natstowngreg - Aug 29, 2011 at 1:55 PM

Morse gets buzzed fairly often with high, inside fastballs. That’s just the book on pitching to him, and it’s rarely caused any retaliation, large-group debates at the mound, etc. At the same time, Morse (and his manager) expect to get first base if a pitch hits him.

Don’t know what Davey said, of course, but given West’s history of childish and immature behavior, I suspect the umpire was at fault on that ejection.

As for Dusty’s ejection, I could tell that was going to happen a few seconds into the argument, because he didn’t seem like he planned to stop arguing.

halladaysbiceps - Aug 29, 2011 at 6:54 AM

Baseball Idiot,

I agree. You can’t argue balls or strikes. But there is a way around that. You are allowed to say to an umpire “Hey, don’t you think that ball was a little high, a little low, or a little outside?”

By doing this, you are not showing the ump up and are maybe going to get a future call from the ump in your favor on a borderline strike. That’s how it works.

But, the West ejection in question was a hit by pitch dispute, not balls or strikes.

Think Granderson’s gonna win it. Never like to see a Yankee win MVP, but he deserves it as much as the three Red Sox (who will split the vote) or Bautista (who won’t win it because his team isn’t winning the division; definitely his fault).

His offensive numbers are very impressive but the batting average is a bit low (.277 as of last night I believe) and even he would admit that he strikes out too much. Hate to say it as a Yankees fan but Gonzales deserves it more.